You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book seeks to redress the balance of reporting in the sport's literature which has always favoured the activities of aquatic gentlemen at the public schools, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Henley Regatta and on the River Thames. This study focuses on the many who helped instigate and nurture the sport but who have been forgotten due to their not being associated with the elite of the sport.
This book gives a fascinating history of the English experience of sport, following its development through the centuries from its earliest beginnings in social play and pastimes, via its adoption as an alternative to the clock-watching routine of urban life, to its modern incarnation as a global business. Key themes and issues in the evolution of sport are examined, including: social structures, such as the division between amateurs and professionals the growth of the popular press and the influence of television the post-war emergence of sports ‘welfarism’ and ‘sport for all’ globalization and commercialization. Looking ahead to the future, the author asks whether our sports experience is turning full circle, and if in the twenty-first century we are returning to a forgotten view of sport as a pastime and recreation.
This work uses original material from clubs and sporting organizations to illuminate the evolution of sporting activity nation-wide. It relates these documents to themes such as commercialism and club fortunes. It concludes by discussing the outlook for English sport.
This new student textbook explores the history and meaning of the modern Olympic Games, providing a comprehensive overview of 'Olympism' from the Ancient Greeks origins through to the beginnings of the International Olympic Committee.
Many historians have claimed that respectability was the sharpest line of social division in Victorian society, even that the line between the 'respectable' and 'unrespectable' was more significant than between rich and poor. This irreverent and revisionist collection argues that they have over-polarised Victorian attitudes and challenges the conventional view that middle-class Victorian leisure had a respectable and serious purpose and approach. Disreputable Pleasures explores the more sinful and unrespectable Victorian male sporting pleasures, demonstrating the complex interrelationships between such value as manliness, muscularity and machismo, or sensuality, virility and hedonism. It she...
Since it’s first publication, Rugby’s Great Split has established itself as a classic in the field of sport history. Drawing on an unprecedented range of sources, this deeply researched and highly readable book traces the social, cultural and economic divisions that led, in 1895, to schism in the game of rugby and the creation of rugby league, the sport of England’s northern working class. Tony Collins’ analysis challenges many of the conventional assumptions about this key event in rugby history – about class conflict, amateurism in sport, the North-South divide, violence on the pitch, the development of mass spectator sport and the rise of football. This new edition is expanded t...
Britain and the Olympic Games, 1908-1920 focuses upon the presentation and descriptions of identity that are presented through the depictions of the Olympics in the national press. This book breaks Britain down into its four nations and presents the debates that were present within their national press.
Covering a time of great social and technological change, this history traces the development of the four classic aquatic disciplines of competitive swimming, diving, synchronized swimming and water polo, with its main focus on racing. Working from the beginnings of municipal recreational swimming, the book fully explores the links between swimming and other aspects of English life society including class, education, gender, municipal governance, sexuality and the Victorian invention of the sports amateur-professional divide. Uniquely focused on swimming -often neglected in analytic sports histories- this is the first study of its kind and will be an important landmark in the establishment of swimming history as a topic of scholarly investigation. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.
'Teachers and Football' explores the origins of schoolboy football in England and the factors influencing its development. It assesses the impact that schoolboy football has had on the development of the national game and on the development of sport in the community at large.
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book provides a detailed consideration of the history of racing in British culture and society, and explores the cultural world of racing during the interwar years. The book shows how racing gave pleasure even to the supposedly respectable middle classes and gave some working-class groups hope and consolation during economically difficult times. Regular attendance and increased spending on betting were found across class and generation, and women too were keen participants. Enjoyed by the royal family and controlled by the Jockey Club and National Hunt Committee, racing's visible emphasis on rank and status helped defend hierarchy and gentlemanly amateurism, and provided support for more conservative British attitudes. The mass media provided a cumulative cultural validation of racing, helping define national and regional identity, and encouraging the affluent consumption of sporting experience and a frank enjoyment of betting. The broader cultural approach of the first half of the book is followed by an exploration if the internal culture of racing itself.